There are still major challenges, and if any one area is liable to trip up the Redmonders it's mobile. The ill-conceived purchase of Nokia cost billions, and even worse is the failure to develop a coherent mobile strategy years after it became a necessity.

But the balance sheet is now definitely tilted in Microsoft's favor, which couldn't be said a few years ago. Wall Street makes a lot of bad calls when it comes to technology companies, but it's revealing that Microsoft's price-to-earnings ratio, a measure of future expectations, is higher than Apple's.

Microsoft entered the hardware space a few years ago when it became clear that none of the PC makers were likely to produce a decent Windows tablet. The original Surface, particularly the weird and nearly useless Surface RT version, wasn't successful -- in fact, it cost the company a $900 million writedown.

Contrast that kludge with the new Surface Pro 4. It's expensive, but it's powered by Intel's new Skylake processor, and Microsoft has reworked the heat distribution system to allow those chips to run at full speed so that they can tear through demanding applications.

Similarly, Microsoft entered the PC space because the PC makers were boring the buying public to death with unimaginative hardware larded with annoying, and sometimes contaminated, bloatware. You can read the reviews yourself, but suffice it to say that the Surface Book is, to quote my colleague Woody Leonhard, "one sexy piece of hardware." When was the last time you heard someone who is often critical of Microsoft say something like that?

Microsoft won't bank tons of money selling such an expensive machine, but clearly the company aims to push the PC makers into making better products, an essential step in keeping the Windows franchise afloat. It also wants to push the PC makers into dialing way back on bloatware, which is why the Microsoft Store sells bloatware-free Signature Editions of PCs made by other companies.

There was a key development on that front last month when Microsoft announced plans to open-source its Chakra JavaScript engine. It shows, as my colleague Serdar Yegulalp wrote, "that Microsoft wants to become a player in the JavaScript ecosystem that has ambitions to be a near-universal runtime for every kind of software."

There isn't a huge amount of money here, but the Chakra strategy is indicative of a new openness and willingness to work in environments where Microsoft is not in a position to dominate the playing field.

Then there's HoloLens. Sure, it's been delayed a few times, but I'm excited to see Microsoft garner buzz -- it practically eclipsed Windows at Microsoft's January 2015 public preview. More important, it shows a willingness to go beyond the corporate comfort zone.

Augmented reality has the potential to be more than a cool toy. Companies like Epson have already developed and sold units that help field technicians fix complex devices and warehouse workers pick products from shelves. This field is crowded, and it will take some doing for Microsoft to succeed, but its willingness to risk it speaks volumes.

I don't mean to minimize Microsoft's weakness or defend boorish behavior like its annoying campaign to push users to download Windows 10. But having watched Microsoft decline as a relevant tech power over the years, I see a lot of reasons to expect a continued resurgence. Watch it carefully in 2016.

San Francisco journalist Bill Snyder covers business and technology. He writes regularly for CIO.com, Stanford's Graduate School of Business, and the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley.